For years paleontologist have thought that Tyrannosaurus arms were small to compinsate for its gigantic skull. Its ancestors had long arms and it was thought that the arms shrunk throughout its evolution as it grew larger. However the recent discovery of Raptorex has challenged this theory. It evolved millions of years before Tyrannosaurus and had a realitivley small head but its arms were very tiny compared to its body size. If the "shrank as they gre" theory was correct and since the arms of Raptorex were so small then the arms would have been gone long before Tyrannosaurus came around. Why do you think Tyrannosaurus has susch small arms?
*insert penis joke* ... seriously though, there's always the whole "learned to stand on the hind legs" theory.
It was an evolutionary mechanism to prevent masturbation, thus ensuring actual mating and thus increased propagation of the species.
You're all wrong. Didn't you people learn this in school? (Yes I know, there are stegosauruses (Stegosauri?) in this pic.) From what I've read in my book on Tyrannosaurus, the small arms were to compensate for it's massive head. Why have big arms when you have a head the size of a refrigerator filled with fifty or more 6" teeth that could crush through bone with a force of more than 10,000 psi?
They were small so that lesser animals would point and laugh at the big dinosaur with the tiny arms. It was during the laughing that the T-Rex took advantage of his speed and giant jaws to then bite into the immobilized prey, unable to move because they were laughing so hard at what they thought was an evolutionary joke. I thought the big head/tiny arms joke was from "Meet the Robinsons"? I don't recall there being anything about a T-rex having small arms in The Incredibles.
Incidentallyl, Raptorex is the subject of controversy, in terms of its age, and therefore its evolutionary significance. Since the fossil came through the hands of fossil dealers, it's provenance is questionable. It may not be as old as initially claimed and may instead be a juvenile of Tarbosaurus, the closely-related asian variant of Tyrannosaurus. As for Tyrannosaurus itself, I imagine the arms were mostly vestigial. I doubt they served any particularly vital function.
I think they were used as pegs to lock in on it's prey once it was down so it couldn't get away easily
Well, you know what they say about big feet... whose to say "Small Arms" isn't the opposite? If you catch my drift.
